


The Lucky Ones

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Homophobia, M/M, Reference to Het, Underage Drinking, coming of age story, followed by slash, foster kid arthur, giving alcohol to a minor, giving drugs to a minor, internalise homophobia, no very young underage slash, polish arthur, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 02:16:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10584342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A coming of age story where Arthur is a Polish foster kid growing up in section 8 housing in downtown Chicago. This story is about Arthur, and Eames happens to be in it, but that doesn't mean he isn't a significant part of Arthur's life. This fic is canon compliant if you want it to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brookebond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brookebond/gifts).



> **Thank you so much to Brookebond for their work cheerleading & beta-ing this fic, you deserve it as a gift! **
> 
>  
> 
> This is a coming of age story for Arthur, like an introspection into his (possible) background how I see it - with Eames flitting in and out as he goes. 
> 
> A longer break down is at the end of this fic if there is anything in the tags you're worried about.  
> For now: all interactions between Arthur and Eames under the age of sixteen are pre-slash aka. not sexual. So this is 'underage' there is not super underage there. Nongraphic description of youthful sexual moments are included of Arthur when he is younger than that however (with omc & omf).
> 
> Reference to child abuse and/or neglect for Arthur as a foster kid.
> 
> All the Polish is mine, however I learnt my Polish through a Jewish Polish grandmother living in England. Thus I do not expect this to be an accurate depiction of the beautiful language.

  
  


###  Arthur 12  - Eames 17. First Time Arthur Gets High.

  
  


Arthur hasn’t been living with Katya for even a year, but he likes it here. She’s young, younger than all his other foster parents but she’s also nicer than them. That’s not very hard, kids that are still in the system by the time they’re eleven tend to have a wrap sheet of bad foster parents. He’s just had a birthday, turning twelve, and he and Katya stayed up late eating junk food until Arthur had felt sick from all the artificial icing on cheap corner store cupcakes. It’s the best birthday he can remember having.

He’s supposed to have a bedroom but Katya uses it to store some friend’s stuff instead. “Sorry Koziołku, but the living room is warm, no?” She was Polish, like him, which was probably what helped get him placed with her even though she was barely twenty-six herself. That and not many people want to take on kids that old with a reputation of needing to be rehomed. Arthur didn’t think he was a bad kid, he mostly gets called quiet. But there’s often been incidents. He’s only twelve but he knows that most of them aren’t his fault, he didn’t start them. He didn’t finish them either. But his body had told the story for of them for weeks afterwards. So far in his life most men he’s met have turned out to be bullies. The difficulty was when they were the person you’re supposed to report the bullying to.

Katya lives by herself, so he doesn’t have to worry about ‘foster dads’ here. He likes it. “I don’t mind.” He’d told Katya on the first day, and he’d given her his best smile that he used when trying to make a good impression. He’d sleep on the floor if it meant staying there.

It’s why he’s a little bit freaked out when he wakes to some cluttering noises and curses and opens his eyes to see a half naked man standing in the pokey living room. This has never happened before, Katya has definitely had boyfriends but normally she goes to theirs.

When all her female friends come over with bottles of white cider and Russian vodka Katya normally puts him to bed in her room to give them space to party. He likes them too, the girl friends. A few of them are Polish as well, and they trail in and out of the bedroom using the big mirror to put on inches of make up, peppering him with affection and asking him to help do up dresses. Sometimes on those nights Katya comes home with someone and she spends the night in the livingroom. The rumble of a man’s voice down the hall and the strange noises that the kid from Arthur’s last foster home would have called ‘fucking’. 

“Mate it’s three in the pissing morning, I ain’t meeting you just for a fucking five bag… Shit, I mean a nickel bag or whatever you yanks call it.” The man has a strange accent that kind of sounds like something English but garbled somehow. Arthur doesn’t begrudge him for this, because he often sounds Polish especially now he’s been living with Katya. He begrudges him for being in his safe haven, however.

“Ask your mate if he wants an ounce. I’m gonna’ fuck off back to bed any minute now, so call me back soon, yeah?” The man turns around, hitting the cancel button on his phone, and his eyes fall straight on Arthur. “Shit.”

Arthur flinches, he’s not fully awake but the alarming circumstances has him considering calling for Katya, possibly in Polish, so the man doesn’t know what he’s saying. From his experiences so far he doesn’t think Katya invited the man over, although it’d be strange if someone decided to break into a house just wearing a pair of boxers and a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“All right there?” The man asks him.

Arthur takes another look at him, he has some weird tattoos on his chest and some on his arm, and is just some blue cotton away from having his dick out. Arthur opens his mouth to shout for Katya.

“Hey! Don’t worry! Shit, please do me a solid and stay quiet. Katy will have my fuckin’ nut if she knows I woke you.” Arthur snaps his mouth closed, eyeing the man skeptically. He knows Katya’s name — lots of her American friends call her Katy — and the man appears to think he was invited here. 

Arthur is panting a little bit from the adrenaline. It’s almost as if he had been expecting something horrible to happen here all this time and this was it finally coming to a head. It makes him a bit dizzy.

The man grins at him, “Brilliant. Shit, I’m standing here fucking starkers, no wonder you’re buggin’” He grabs a washed out pink towel that was hanging on the clothes airer in the corner and wraps it around his waist. Arthur tracks his movements warily.

“Better yeah? I just didn’t see you there, underneath ‘em coats.” It was winter now, so even though he had a single duvet for himself on the couch, Katya would put her heavy coat on top of him. Even when she came home after he was asleep, Arthur would wake up nestled in the warm synthetic fur of its hood. 

Arthur doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say anything. He’s starting to worry that this man might be around a lot if he’s here while Arthur’s in the living room. Maybe he’s Katya’s new boyfriend. Arthur doesn’t want him to hate him.

The thought of it makes Arthur want to cry, and he’s twelve now so he shouldn’t be crying, that’s stuff kids do. Something must show on his face however because the guy’s expression crumples as well. “Shit, er, I mean shoot? Don’t tell Katya I swore in front of you.” Katya swears like a sailor, mostly in Polish, but Arthur doesn’t say this. 

The man walks up to him, sitting on the edge of the couch next to him so his warm body is pressing against Arthur’s legs through the blanket. Arthur is just a bit overwhelmed all of a sudden and his legs must be shaking enough that the man can feel it.

“Fuck, I mean shit, I mean, let’s just calm down.” He puts a hand on Arthur’s leg, his cigarette is still hanging out of his mouth. “Let’s just watch a bit of telly, and then you can go back to bed, and it’ll be stella’, right?” He picks up the remote from where it was on the floor. Katya doesn’t have many channels, but the man finds some late night showing of a soccer game. “Brilliant, see, got the derby n’everything. West Ham, that’s mine, the ones in red. Millwall, now they’re a bunch of fuckin’ wankers. Propa’ dockers derby shite, me dad used to work shipyard with some of them. Mental lot they were.” 

The man digs his hands into the creases of the cushions and pulls out a lighter. He can’t have known it was there, but Katya smoked enough in the house —  _ not that the social workers knew that _ — that there were lighters everywhere, intuition maybe. Smoke enough cigarettes and there will be a lighter down every couch cushion. He relights his cigarette, a rolled up thing that smells weird. It was the sort of tobacco that Katya only smoked on the balcony or sometimes in the bathroom. It made the room feel heavy. The man keeps talking, “I ain’t been to see a match in years, wouldn’t go to whatever you lot think is footie. Ain’t no real kicking you see, a bastardisation of the beautiful game.”

Arthur watches him critically, trying to work out if this is supposed to be friendly behaviour or threatening. He really doesn’t like men. Arthur wishes he could just spend all his time with girls. His life would be so much better if that was the case.

“Yeah, see, it’s all right. Why not close your eyes? Try and catch a wink. No? Fuck it, don’t tell Katy, try some of this.” The man flicks the ash of his cigarette into the empty mug that had contained Arthur’s leczo z włoszczyzna —  _ Katya stocked proper Polish pantry items, another reason why Arthur didn’t want to leave  _ — and brings the cigarette to Arthur’s mouth.

“Go on, put your lips ‘round that.” Arthur has watched enough people smoke in his life that he knew what to do, but as soon as he tries to swallow the smoke he coughs it back out. 

The man laughs, “Sorry love, it’s always like that the first time. Give it another go. Don’t swallow, just hold it in your mouth.” Arthur leans forward a little again, sucking in and holding the hot smoke in his mouth. He can’t imagine why anyone would enjoy doing this. “Yeah that’s it. See you’re a natural, should’a got you a shotty. Alright now take it back as hard as you can.” 

Arthur sucks in air, making a little gasping noise, it instantly makes him dizzy. Like his body was expecting oxygen and got smoke instead, he keeps it down as long as he could until he finally had to let it out again. The man is beaming at him. “See, ain’t that bad. You always remember your first hit. Actually on second thoughts, don’t remember it. Don’t tell Katy yeah?”

The dizziness doesn’t stop even once he blows out the smoke, in fact it seemed to increase. His body suddenly feels like a mixture of incredibly heavy and floating. He lets his head fall back down on his balled up pillow and stares blankly at the screen. He feels weird, it felt good, but also inhuman. He is tired all of a sudden. 

The man takes a deep pull on the cigarette himself and settles back to watch the telly, ruffling Arthur’s hair and laughing at him about something, but Arthur couldn’t really hear. At some point he must have fallen asleep, but he doesn’t remember when. It was like just sinking into a deep pool of hot water.

When he wakes, Eames is gone, and he doesn’t see him around again.

  
  


###  Arthur 13 - Eames 18. First Time Arthur Has Sex.

 

He doesn’t really want to do it, but all the boys he knew from Bridgeport projects have already done it. Or they say they have anyway. Arthur doesn’t even really know what sex is, like he gets it, he’s jerked off —  _ although if he’s going to be honest, he hadn’t even really thought about it until everyone kept talking about it _ — and sex is supposed to be like that. But he can’t imagine how doing that with a girl is supposed to be any better.

Her name is Paula, she’s not Polish but her family is slovakian, so they can mumble their way through a conversation with each other as they sit in the back of her friend’s car. Denise is nice, older than both of them at 16, and not European. She was born here, but her family are from Kingston, Jamaica. Arthur has been over to her house and eaten hot caribbean jerk chicken and tried things like plantain chips. When they met up today he had brought her some makowiec to try in return. It makes Paula jealous, and when Denise parks her car on the green and wanders off to the local stripmall Paula turns to him and says, “Do you want to fuck Denise instead?”

Her words are bitter and laced with anger, but her face is completely impassive like she isn’t feeling a thing. Arthur is amazed by it, he always thinks people can tell exactly what is on his face. He almost wants to ask what her secret is. “No… I like your face.” It’s the only thing he can think of. 

She smiles at him then, it looks fake, but everything on that face would be, and leans forward to kiss him, smearing cherry lip gloss all over his mouth. 

The whole thing is over before it even really started. It was just a bit of theatre that made him feel slightly sick. Arthur didn’t climax, but he pretended he did, and in the seven minutes duration it was happening Paula faked about ten orgasms. 

They sat in the car again, waiting for Denise to return and drive them back to Bridgeport. Paula turns to him, “That was nice, we can do it again.” Arthur would really rather not but he’s genuinely curious as to why Paula would want to.

He racks his brain for nice words in Slavok, “That’d be great, did you like it mača?” 

“Yeah. You’re nice. You didn’t pinch me or make me bleed. You’re the best fuck I’ve had.” 

Arthur nods, “Same, do you have any smokes?”

  
  
  
  


###  Arthur 14 - Eames 19. First Time Arthur Has Scotch.

  
  


He’s been away from Katya for almost six months now and he misses her. It’s not that he never sees her around as he’s still in Bridgeport, but she worked a lot and didn’t really have time for him when he lived there. She’d cried when she told him she got a DUI and was likely to lose custody. 

He’s tried to be strong for her, he was fourteen now, he had to be an adult about this stuff. They’d shoved him in a home on the other side of the projects, an all American family already fostering two Serbian kids — not related. Apparently that was close enough for the authorities when it came to matching him to his background. 

Predan ( _ “We call him Peter, it’s a more American name, it makes things easier, like yours Arthur, you’re lucky you have such a normal name.” _ ) had an older brother who lived near by. Sometimes the two of them went off to visit him, hung around while the older boys did drugs and begged for cigarettes just to have something to do. It was rough in Bridgeport, but it was always worse the further south you got. It was the kind of place Katya would tell him not to go, but she wasn’t his guardian anymore so that didn’t matter.

He’s getting the shit beaten out of him. Arthur doesn’t have anything of value on him, so they’re just doing it for sport, and Arthur’s only recourse is to endure it. Refuse to break for them. 

“Oi! What the fuck are you doing? I’ll put your fucking head through the wall you pieces of shit!” 

The attack ends swiftly and the two assailants scurry away. Arthur is a little bit dizzy from the beating, and he collapses against the wall. He won’t cry. He doesn’t know where Predan is but he hopes the boy got back safely. 

“Christ alive, you look like shit,” says the voice suddenly attached to a very bulky figure in front of him. Arthur is short, as well as pretty scrawny, and the way he’s leaning against the wall means he’s even smaller when compared to the beast of a man standing in front of him. Arthur really hopes he’s not about to get beaten up again because this guy could probably kill him. 

“Soddin’ ‘ell. You alright?” A hand takes his jaw and brings his head up so he’s looking at the man’s face. A wave of familiarity hits him, he knows this guy from somewhere. 

“Shodge I kno’ ‘ou?” Arthur tries to say, his lip is completely busted up and he’s pretty sure he bit open his tongue at some point. It makes speaking clearly difficult, he spits out some of the blood pooling in his mouth.

“Fuck me. Ain’t you Katy’s boy?” The unwieldy accent snaps into place and Arthur finally recognises him. 

“Oh. Yesh. No. No’ any more.” This conversation would probably be mortifying at the best of times, talking to someone who almost made you cry in your bed two years ago. Having to do it just after getting the shit kicked out of you is  _ not ideal  _ in Arthur’s eyes.

The man gets out his phone and calls someone. “Katy? Yeah it’s Eames.” Eames is a strange sounding name, it doesn’t sound English. He wonders if Eames is actually from Eastern Europe too. “I’ve got your kid here, someone’s licked him up hard.” Eames doesn’t say anything for a moment, before handing Arthur the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

Arthur takes it, “Hello?”

Katya speaks to him in straight Polish, suggesting she either doesn’t want Eames to know what they’re saying, or she has company and she’s trying to keep the conversation private from. He plays along, answering in Polish too.

“ _ I don’t know who did it. _ ” Polish is like a second skin to him, and funnily enough the bruised lip isn’t as much of a hurdle now. Almost as if the language was built to be spoken after taking a beating. 

“ _ Where are you? _ ” 

Arthur winces, “ _ Groveland _ .”

“ _ Arthur! _ ” She throws a long tirade of curse words at him, “ _ Why are you there? _ ”

Arthur shrugs even though she can’t see it, he flicks his eyes to Eames who is staring at him intensely, a bewildered expression on his face.

“ _ My new foster brother has family here. _ ”

“ _ Yeah well you don’t. Did you think I was lying to you when I said not to go there? _ ”

The thought makes him sad, “ _ No, I trusted you. _ ”

“ _ Then why? _ ”

“ _ Just… I hate it in the new place. My new guardians hate Poles. I hate them _ .” It’s a sullen bratty thing to say and he’s glad that Eames can’t understand him.

“ _ Fuck, I’m sorry Arthur. I am… But that means tough shit to me. I don’t want the next phone call to be that you’re dead. _ ”

“ _ I’ve learnt my lesson. _ ” Arthur answers, already thinking about the fact that he’ll probably come here again anyway. 

“ _ I hope so. Put Eames back on the phone. _ ”  He hands the phone back to the man.

“Alright Katy? ... Yeah I can do that … Nah, don’t worry about it darling.” Eames is still looking at him, it makes Arthur feel like a specimen. “I’ll speak to you soon.” He hangs up the phone and keeps staring at Arthur.

Arthur doesn’t say anything to break the silence, the dizziness has returned and he spits out another mouthful of blood. 

“I, er, didn’t know you could do that.” Eames finally says.

Arthur looks at him warily. “Do what? Spit up blood?” 

Eames grins like Arthur has just told him a really funny joke, “With your face right now that ain’t new. I meant the Polish stuff, chatting it. Did Katy teach you?”

Arthur shakes his head, regretting it when it makes the world tilt violent. “No. I knew it before.”

“You’re Polish?”

Arthur squints at him, “Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

Eames lets out a belt of laughter, throwing his head back before bringing his gaze back to Arthur. “You’re a fiery little git aren’t ya’? Fuck me, just been fucked up and you already startin’ for more.” 

Arthur scowls at him, he doesn’t like being laughed at. Doesn’t like that Eames isn’t taking him seriously, although he probably couldn’t do anything if they did fight. But Arthur would do it just for the principle of it. “I’m Polish,” is all he says again, like it’s an affirmation. 

Eames nods, giving him a grin. “Not a surprise really. Katy was a mad-one herself. Man though, you got licked bad.” By the end of his speech he’s frowning a little bit at Arthur’s bruises. Arthur is trying to ignore the urge to spit out blood again. Eames reaches inside his jacket pocket and takes out a hip flask. It looks nice, really nice, way too fancy to be just flashing around here. Although that’s probably a perk of looking like you could take down a full grown bear. He offers it to Arthur. “Wash your mouth out with this, love. It’ll sting but it’ll help.”

Arthur takes the flask, unscrewing the lid and sniffing it cautiously. It smells like alcohol, and it’s a honey golden color. “What is it?”

“Scotch. And not the shit stuff. You’re getting first rate treatment here. Go on.” 

Arthur brings the can to his mouth and takes a mouthful, it stings like a bitch. He almost spits it back out straight away it hurts so much, but instead he sloshes it about, letting it seep into the open wound of his tongue and spill over the worse of his lip. It’s horrible but already it feels like he isn’t bleeding so much. 

“That’s right. Good. Spit it out.”

Arthur looks him straight in the eye and swallows instead, the bloody acrid alcohol coating his throat as it goes.

Eames’ face lights up again, “You’re a riot, you knob you didn’t gotta’ do that. I’d have let you take a swig anyway.”

Arthur has never had hard spirits before. Katya let him have some wine coolers, and some vodka in a lemonade just for patriotism, but never something straight. He’s sipped beer with some of the boys but it all tasted rank and if he was being honest he’d rather not leave himself feeling vulnerable. Right now he’s already fucking vulnerable, so he might as well embrace it. “Can I have more now?”

Eames shrugs. “Sure, why not, just don’t tell Katy,” he says with a wink.

Arthur blushes furiously at the reference, hoping the bruising hides it. He takes another swig of the flask, the taste more obvious now it isn’t tempered with blood and swallows it down. It makes him feel warm. “Wow.”

Eames takes back the flask. “That’s what I was thinking. Come on then, let’s get you home.” 

Arthur doesn’t move, “You’re taking me home? Why?”

“Katy asked me.”

“How do you know where I live?”

Eames frowns at him. “Of course I know where Katy lives.”

“Oh… Right.. Yeah, I don’t live with Katya anymore.” He tries to say it evenly and not like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. It isn’t, much worse things have happened to him. It’s just that Katya was the best thing to happen to him, and he’s lost it. 

They get to Eames’ car, it’s an older ford model but it looks like it’s been fixed up. Eames opens the door for him and Arthur scowls to himself,  _ he’s not an invalid — even if he is listing to the side _ .

Eames’ music comes on as soon as he turns the key in the ignition. It’s something garish with lots of people rapping over it with English accents as strange and intelligible as Eames’ own. Arthur mostly sits in silence, he’s exhausted from the fight and just wants to go to bed. 

“You should learn how to fight,” Eames finally says as they’re pulling up to Bridgeport. They’ll be at Katya’s soon. 

“I don’t think I want to do any more fighting than I need to.” Arthur answers, thinking about how much he doesn’t enjoy sports at school. It’s always an excuse to pick on the strange poor Polish kid who doesn’t have any parents to complain for him.

“Nah man, it’ll sort you out when you need to. Get in one good right hook,” Eames takes his hand off the wheel and punches in the air to articulate what he’s saying, “and no one’s gonna’ wanna’ try.”

Arthur shrugs, it’s not like he has money to pay for lessons and he wouldn’t want to ask any of his friends to teach him. That sounded like a great way to get beaten up. Eames doesn’t seem to mind his lack of response however. He puts his car into park outside Katya’s apartment block. Arthur wants to get inside, and even though he’ll have to wait outside the apartment until Katya gets home — _ she let him keep the key, but he left it at home today for safe keeping _ — the safety of the building’s hallways already a tempting respite all the same. 

The wait might be long though. “Do you have anything to read?” He asks just as he puts his hand on the door.

Eames kills the music and starts looking around, “Maybe. No classics though.” He opens up his glove box and pulls out a magazine, “what about this?”

It’s the New Scientist magazine, an older copy with the corners ratty from being shoved in a glove box and the back page is missing some strips — probably from where Eames used it for roach paper. “Yeah, that works. Thanks.”

He walks up to the building, calls Katya’s neighbour at number 24 who will remember him and waits to be buzzed in. When the door shuts behind him he sees Eames still waiting in his car. 

Arthur slumps down against the wall in front of Katya’s door, opening up the magazine to take his mind off the pain he’s in. This issue is about sleep cycles and the science of sleep, Arthur isn’t too interested in that —  _ he’s trying his best not to fall asleep here _ — and flicks through it until he finds something that catches his attention. There’s an article on optical illusions, but it’s not that which is interesting. The main photo attached is a strange picture of steps looping round. The credit calls it M. C. Escher’s Penrose Stairs. What’s so interesting is that the advertisement page opposite, a mostly plain blue image advertising a brand of yoghurt, has a hand drawn reproduction of it. It’s meticulous, Arthur would have thought it was a printing if he couldn’t feel the dips in the page where a biro dented the paper. 

Arthur wasn’t interested in art much, it always sounded like a waste of time. What would he draw, or paint, anyway? This was beautiful though, the technical ability was amazing. The idea that someone could have sat down and drawn this… It made the original so much more impressive, hitting home that someone had taken maths, and science, and precision, and bended them to create an image.

By the time Katya got home Arthur was still staring. 

  
  
  


###  Arthur 15 - Eames 20. The First Time Arthur Jerks Someone Off

 

Arthur gets a job cleaning the local gym. His hours start at four in the morning so the place can open for six when the working world comes to use the equipment. It’s not an upmarket place, he’s pretty sure that he’s being paid under the table and there are illegal fights taking place at night, but that doesn’t really bother him. There’s worse gyms in the area, a few places Arthur wouldn’t set foot in if you paid him twice as much. 

After school he comes back and joins whatever class is on, most of the instructors know him by now so don’t appear phased. The only real training he does is boxing, where he finds that the spinning classes he did with young and beautiful black mothers on a Tuesday helps his agility, and the yoga he does with giggling schools girls every time they try downward facing dog helps his form. 

They like him, Arthur has always been a hit with women, mainly because he genuinely enjoys their company. Less ego and eager to prove their metal at a drop of a hat, and happy to let him read his work as they talk around him. He always has a girlfriend, seems to constantly be having sex — it sets some of the guys he knows on edge — but mostly he just wants to be close to them. They remind him of sitting in Katya’s bed as her friends came in and out and told him to be good.

Men are violent, cruel, often stupid and lack any nuance, and worse of all, they seem to hate that Arthur prefers women’s company. Just Arthur’s luck that he can only get hard thinking of them. 

He thinks Paula knows, his apparent off and on again girlfriend. She comes into his life and declares them ‘together’ again whenever she’s decided to get rid of whatever fuckhead she was dating. Arthur accepts, if he happens to be dating a different girl he texts her and breaks it off.  _ That of all things the men he knows respects, and it makes him sick. _ He spends days in Paula’s bedroom, doing his homework at her desk, practicing Slavok with her, or her mom. They all like him, they’d like him more if he was Slovakian instead, but Polish would do.

They don’t have sex anymore, which is why Arthur prefers her to anyone else. She gets it, he thinks. That all of this is just to maintain an image, she’s clever like that. Asks him to give her a hickey on her breast before going out to see her friends, even though they’ve spent the whole evening on separate sides of the room. 

Arthur and her have just gone ‘off’ again though. She texts him that she’s going to try dating some guy in the year above her at school. He shrugs, collapsing into the ratty coach in Predan’s brother’s place.

“Single man again,” he tells Predan, stealing his beer and drinking it down even though he hates the taste.

“You gonna’ go out and fuck some bitches?” Predan answers him, one eye on the video game he’s playing, the other one smirking at Arthur. He thinks Arthur is some kind of lothario, spending nights in different girl’s bedrooms. His phone filled with calls and texts. 

“Nah, it’s not worth the effort.” He kinda’ hates Predan, if they hadn’t lived together for two years before the guy moved in with his brother then Arthur wouldn’t have ever bothered even talking to him. He was mean, selfish, utterly disgusting to women and quick to throw a punch. Arthur had also jerked off watching him sleep probably hundreds of times by now. It’s what happens when you share a room with someone, hot nights when Predan would push off his blankets and Arthur could take in his shape in secret. Even the few times Predan had woken up, the boy had just rolled his eyes and turned over. They were sharing a room, where was Arthur supposed to be doing it?

“Moj prijatelj, you are fucked in the head if you think anything is better than fucking women.” He finishes off his can of cheap beer — bad taste, high percentage — and hands Arthur his own full one. “At least we get pissed then, yeah?”

“Yeah alright, something new and exciting then.” It annoys him that he finds Predan’s laugh attractive. Everything about Predan annoys him. That’s the problem.

They get drunk, it’s a Saturday so there’s no school or work tomorrow. Predan’s brother Gavrilo is out for the night so they confidently plunder his alcohol store. ( _ Arthur, wisely, shoves a few dollars in the cupboard for him to find _ ). They’re both young enough that getting their hands on hard liquor is a novelty, and it gets them pissed pretty fast.

“Our ancestors would be ashamed of us,” Predan says, rolling a joint and half laying on Arthur who is collapsed against the cushions like it’s hard to sit up.

“Why? Because we put vodka in American beer?” It had been a terrible idea. 

Predan laughs, that horribly attractive laugh that Arthur normally hears when Predan is taking pleasure in someone else’s misery. It makes his skin crawl, and flush warm. “Ne, moj mali rodak,” Arthur scowls at the endearment, “because we haven’t even finished the bottle and we’re done.” Predan takes in a deep drag from the joint and smirks at him.

“I think our ancestors are pissed that we’re in this country.”

“You wanna’ go back to Poland?” Predan asks him, interested for once, although his expression is clearly blissed from weed and booze.

“I dunno’, maybe. I think I’d rather be the weird American guy there, than the weird Pole here.”

Predan mock punches him in the face. “Arthur, you’re weird no matter what.”

“Fuck off.” Arthur elbows him out of his personal space. Predan grabs him, an arm around his collar and pulls him down so Predan can mess up his hair, Arthur’s face crushed against the hard chest. “Cut it out.”

“You’ve always been fucking weird.”

“Thanks, now fuck off.”

“Whatever.” Predan passes him the joint, and Arthur — probably because he’s drunk and a little bit stoned — let’s himself stay crashed against Predan’s side. Soaking in the warmth of him, remembering how it feels for a second to have a man pressed next to him, just learning the sensory information so he can explore it, dissect it, analyse it at another time.

He takes in a few pulls, holding the smoke in his mouth before dragging it back. The buzz warms him all over, the weed must be Gavrilo’s as it’s strong and oozes through him. He slumps further into Predan’s shoulder, enjoying the way the man’s arm falls around him, feeling boneless.

“Dobro, da?” Predan’s thick Serbian accent is as warm as his body. Arthur feels himself sinking into it.

“Tak.” 

Predan laughs at him again, fiddling with Arthur’s floppy fringe that he keeps considering shaving off if it didn’t make him look even younger. “You’ve always been weird. I thought you looked like a girl when I first met you.”

“Zamknij sie dupek.” He scowls at Predan, annoyed that it’s ruining his buzz and that it preys on one of his actual fears.

“You still do. Maybe that’s why all the girls want you.”

“Yeah, they’re all lezbos, that’s why they want to suck my cock,” Arthur says petulantly. 

Predan squeezes him suddenly, shifting his hips a little. It knocks the air out of Arthur, and he’s terrified his face is going red. Predan just jabbers through it. “Fuck Arthur, you’re fucked up in the head, why aren’t you out there now?”

Arthur doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to get blow jobs off girls, it takes too much concentration and a lot of thinking about guys… Like Predan. And here he gets to be close to a guy who is at least unlikely to beat him up.  _ (Predan has definitely beaten him up in the past, but most of the time he’s being playful and the few times he’s done it for real he bought Arthur some weed as some strange non-apology _ .) “It’s too much effort, you know.. Calling a girl, being nice. Pretending you want to hang out with them, going over there. Probably like an hour of talking to them.” It’s all a lie, but it’s pretty much the sort of stuff he’s heard other guys complain about. 

Predan snorts. “Fair. But man, I’m always so horny when I smoke. I’d drive to the other side of Bridgeport just for a handjob.”

Arthur can feel his heart racing, it feels like the whole situation has some kind of tension to it. He’s so freaked out and excited. Quickly he lets his eyes flicker to Predan’s crotch and can see the outline of his erection. He skitters his eyes to Predan’s hand that is holding the joint, taking it and taking in some more. To bolster his confidence or calm his nerves he doesn’t know. “I guess,” Arthur says.

“Will you touch my dick?” Arthur was just inhaling another hit, and he flinches at the words, making him cough it up again. He’s blushing, at least hopefully that looks like it’s from having a coughing fit. 

“What?” he snaps, looking at him. Arthur is suddenly scared that something about him gave it away. Maybe he does look like a girl, maybe people can just sense it on him. 

“I know it’s fucked up, but it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you get horny when you smoke?” 

Arthur is feeling blindsided. “Obviously,” he says, agreeing. That was always his plan, watch what ‘normal’ guys do and agree with them. Copy them. Make whatever they said was normal become his normal. He never expected  _ this  _ to happen.

“Look. Gavrilo said that he walked in on two of his friends doing it. He said he almost beat them up, but it turns out one of them had just lost a bet. And you know, they were stoned and horny. It’s not real or anything. Just, fuck Arthur, how good would it be if girls were cool with this shit. Getting stoned and fucked, and would jerk you off?”

Arthur feels like they’re too young for this logic, like somewhere along the line someone made a mistake. He wants to do it, it might be his only chance ever, just to know. But he’s also terrified that it will look like he wants to. “I’m not a girl.”

Predan smiles at him. “You look like one,” he teases,  blocking Arthur’s attempt to punch him,  “fuck alright— you’re not a girl. I’d close my eyes anyway.” 

If he does this he’ll probably have to never see Predan again because one day the guy would realise that there’s literally nothing Arthur would get out of this unless he wanted to do it and then he’s going to know. “I must be off my face if I’m even considering this,” Arthur says bluntly.

“Exactly, moj mali rodak, you’re drunk, it doesn’t matter.” 

“Don’t call me your cousin in the same breath you ask me to touch your dick.” Arthur snatches the last of the vodka and chugs it. It makes his eyes water a little but he needs it. He hands the bottle to Predan to drinks the remnants, and relights the end of the joint. “If you tell anyone—” 

“—trust me. Not a soul.”

“Whatever.” 

In the end Arthur is probably a little too drunk to appreciate any of it. The alcohol tips him over and he has to keep his own eyes closed mostly to stop the room from spinning. He does most of it through Predan’s trousers, only going inside at the end. He kinda wanted to get it out, but that felt like something someone gay would do. So he didn’t. Halfway through Predan takes a deep hit of the joint, flicking the butt into an ashtray and collapsing back into the cushions and Arthur feels like he’s going to hyperventilate. At some point he became ‘good’ at having sex with girls, he’d rather they enjoy it than him, and they’re less likely to notice if he doesn’t orgasm that way. He has no idea if this is any good for Predan, but at some point the man makes a few noises. 

Near the end, when Arthur is actually touching him —  _ just remember everything and think about it later  _ — Predan suddenly grabs his arm, clenching it tight and encouraging him to go faster. It’s the most attractive thing Arthur has ever experienced and he doesn’t even know why.

And then it’s over, Arthur’s hand is damp, he has an erection and is suddenly feeling super awkward. He wipes his hands on Predan’s pants, that makes the guy laugh. “Gross,” Arthur says, “I’m gonna go wash my hands, and maybe vomit.”

“That’s just the vodka.”

“What ever.”

Arthur doesn’t vomit, instead he uses the same hand to jerk off, thinking about the way Predan clutched at him and the teen’s horrible laugh. It’s the best orgasm Arthur has ever had, and that annoys him. At least when he returns Predan has passed out on the couch, and Arthur grabs his stuff and heads home. 

  
  
  


###  Arthur 16 - Eames (almost) 21. First Time Arthur Kisses a Man.

  
  


Arthur is alone boxing in the gym. It’s past the closing time but he has the keys and he knows to lock up when he’s done. He’s ninety percent certain that there’s an illegal fight going on in the other room (that or about fifty people are watching someone get murdered.). He’s been invited a few times by the owners but politely turned them down. He doesn’t need to get into that shit. Katya would probably kill him. 

He turned sixteen last November, and submitted his emancipation papers straight away. They take months to complete but any day now he can get out from his foster parents. He’s the only one left from who was there when he moved in at thirteen, but they’ve already taken on some more kids. One of them is Polish, the other Russian. Apparently his guardians have a reputation of being ‘good with’ Eastern European kids. It’s a load of bull shit. They’re fucking monsters to kids like that. Trying to turn them inside out, and stamp out anything foreign in them. Jason —  _ a man Arthur has never called his foster dad  _ — had tried to slap him when he spoke Polish to the new kid. Telling him not to get ideas into his head. It was sick. Luckily Arthur was a bit better at fighting these days and the arm that had been aiming for his face got blocked. Jason doesn’t like it that he can’t be such a bully anymore, and tells him to get out.

Punching the shit out of a heavy bag is an efficient way to ground out his frustrations. He just needs to keep cool and not lose his head, do nothing that can show up on his records or Jason could use to stop him from being granted emancipation. Katya recently got a job on the north side of the city. She’s moving soon, and Arthur is giving her money to rent a room with her even before he can move in there. It’ll be brilliant when he’s free, find a job up on the nicer side of the city. Change schools for the rest of his academic career. Leave Bridgeport behind. It’s the kind of start Katya wanted to give him before, and her excitement alone makes it worth it. 

He’ll probably miss Paula, but she’s pregnant now with some guy’s kid so she’ll be busy anyway. He’s not even Slavik, just some American boy with a thing for pretty blonde girls. Her parents were heart broken, sent him a card saying they would have loved to have him join the family. Arthur can’t tell how Paula feels about all of it, and it’s that that makes him love her. The last time he saw her, sitting in the back of her car eating rolmopsy right out the jar —  _ moja babička says they’re good for the baby _ — she’d told him.

“I learned a lot from you.”

“I know. Like what tits are.” Some people thought she was always angry, or even dull, but Arthur knew she was incredibly funny — playing with the truth and that which was just a bit too close to it.

“I used to lie in your bed and watch you talk to your friends. Trying to memorise your expressions.”

She rips up a piece of herring with her perfectly shaped nails painted in a cold steel. “I know. If you were a different man that would be the most romantic thing anyone will ever say to me.” 

“I can marry you if you want. I don’t care about it being someone else’s kid.” 

She looks at him brazenly, taking him in. Arthur knows her, knows that what he said meant something. “You were wasted being a man. They’re too ugly,” she says finally.

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Better than being a girl. At least this way I get to marry a woman.”

She keeps looking at him, her mouth still completely set. “There’s worse things than having to fuck men. It just depends where you are in the world.”

It’s a testament to how much he’s learned from her that he doesn’t react to that. And she finally smiles, a real one, leaning forward to kiss him on the lips like it’s a reward.

“Milujem ťa Paula.”  _ I do love you Paula. _

“Tak, ale nie jak chcesz.” It’s an old game, speaking each other’s languages back to one another. Sometimes Arthur feels like every kid in Bridgeport is going to walk away with a head full of swear words, food names, and love letters from every country in Eastern Europe. He hates it here, but he’ll never regret that. 

“No, not the way I want. Not the way you want either.” It was the closest he'd come to being accepted for who he was. 

Arthur punches the bag again, it hurts his knuckles and he knows he should rebind them. He’s just so restless, he feels like he’s on the cusp of something. A big shift, a new beginning. But all he’s getting right now are the ends of everything he knows. It’s leaving him untethered, in limbo. He wants to go do something stupid like call Predan and ask if he wants to get fucked up even though they've barely spent time alone in the past year because Arthur gets paranoid every time they're together. 

Predan wasn't his first  _ anything  _ really, they were never something to each other. At best they were two neglected foster kids who hung out because they never fitted in anywhere else. Arthur can’t even really say that he liked him, definitely didn’t love him. He just felt strange, that in the next few weeks he might not see the boy again. Maybe if Arthur knew that he was going tomorrow he’d walk up to Predan and kiss him. Even though he’d probably get punched in the face, even though Predan might straight up kill him, it almost felt worth it. Maybe Predan wouldn’t, maybe the guy had always known, like Paula had. Maybe Predan wanted to kiss him back.

Arthur is in a really dangerous mood, he starts hitting the bag harder. Trying to push away all his bad ideas and impulsive thoughts. He’s not supposed to do anything that might get him in trouble, if he meets a social worker with a black eye he’s unlikely to get the emancipation approved. Not all social workers are awful, most of the ones that actually work with kids are great. It’s the system that is fucking trash, and those who sit in offices and say that ‘ _ You’ve always been a difficult child Arthur _ ’. Like anyone could be anything other than difficult in a world like this. 

He gives the bag three particularly vicious hits, which must be what covered the sound of the door opening, as it’s only when the clang of the metal door closing rings out that Arthur notices that someone has entered the room. He turns expecting it to be one of the owners, or maybe one of the coaches, pausing when a slightly less familiar but very recognisable figure is slouching against the wall watching him.

“You alright Arthur?” Eames asks him. 

Arthur doesn’t see him often, sometimes he’ll see him smoking outside the gym with the boxing ring when Arthur leaves at night, or rarely about Bridgeport. Eames isn’t Bridgeport himself, although most people know him. He’s been a constant periphery figure in Arthur’s life in their little enclave of the world.

Arthur nods. He wants to pack up and go home now, instead of face Eames in his restless mood. But he needs to do a cool down otherwise his muscles will seize by the morning. Arthur walks over to the skipping rope and begins jumping trying not to look at the man. He looks younger somehow, although maybe it’s just that Arthur has been getting older. He remembers how much he thought Eames was an adult the first time they met, when in truth he was probably the age Arthur is now.

“You got good form blud, you been at this long?” Eames is still openly watching him, trying to engage him in conversation. 

Arthur slows his jumps. “A year.” His answer is clipped.

“Fair. You practice often?” Eames pulls off his tank top, it was damp in a few places from sweat. If Arthur had to guess he’d say that Eames had just participated in whatever match was happening in the building.

“Kinda’, it’s better here than at home.” 

“Shit, I fuckin’ bet. Man, I can’t wait ‘til next week. I don’t know how you yanks bear waiting till you’re twenty-one to drink.”

Arthur puts down the rope, it’s hard to concentrate with Eames talking to him. He moves over to the mat instead and starts his stretches. “You’re turning twenty-one next week?”

“Pretty much. You gonna be around? You n’Katy should come.”

Arthur shakes his head, “Katy moved.”

“Shame. I was wondering where she was. You wanna’ go a round?” Eames comes forward a few steps, throws a few playful swipes in the air to highlight his point. 

Arthur was pulling his leg up behind him to stretch his legs and lets go at Eames’ words. “You mean spar?” His eyes glance over Eames’ form, he’s huge. Masculine. The kind of man Arthur makes a habit of staying away from lest he does something stupid and gets himself beaten up. “I don’t think you’re in my weight category.”

Eames laughs. He’s always doing that, acting as if what Arthur says is incredibly funny. Like they’ve got some kind of thing going. No one else acts like he’s funny. Not even the girls who actually like him. “You calling me fat bruv?” He holds his hand to his stomach, like he’s wounded or hiding himself.

Eames is not fat. He’s bulky. Thick around the stomach with built arms that put it in proportion. “No.” 

“You think I got an advantage? I can go easy if you like.” He keeps walking forward. Arthur really wishes he wouldn’t. The taunt cuts at him though. He’s always had an ego, an inability to let other people get away with making him feel small.

“More like you’re going to be too slow. I wouldn’t like to give you a black eye for your birthday.” Arthur scowls at him, Eames is really very close now. He thinks of Paula and what she’d do now.

Eames graces him with more of that laughter. “Arthur, ain’t you a riot. Alright, you go easy on me then.” He picks up Arthur’s tape and wraps his hands.

“Bare knuckle?” Arthur says, looking at the broad fists of Eames’ hands. They could do some serious damage to him.

“Yeah, we’re just playing around. It’ll be easier to know what we’re throwing like this.” He’s on the mat with Arthur now and puts up his arms in the block position. Arthur grabs the tape and rebinds his own hands. 

They skitter around the mat a few times, Arthur light on his feet trying to get an eye on Eames’ position. He’s good at this, his form isn’t finessed but he’s clearly well practiced and wins often. Not sloppy enough that Arthur’s quick movement can simply give him an edge like the people he spars with in class.

Eames makes a few swipes at him, chasing him around the mat. Arthur is very fast, it’s where all the yoga, spinning classes, and even some ballet come into use. On the balls of his feet, able to dart away as he track’s Eames’ movements. He can’t get an advantage though. Eames, though slower, is incredibly strong. The few times Arthur jabs at him the smallest knock has his arm in a different trajectory. It’s how Eames gets a good few jabs in. 

Arthur hates losing. He darts away again, trying to work out a line of attack. More bobbing and weaving than hitting back. Eames laughs.

“Didn’t know you liked dancing so much Arthur. I’d’ve taken you to a club if I knew.” 

Eames’ taunt makes him go cold. It cuts him deeper than Eames’ affable expression makes allowances for. It’s not about being competitive, it’s about not letting people think he’s some gay fag they can beat up. 

The real problem is that Arthur has been beaten up a lot in his life. It means that even though he doesn’t like the prospect, he knows he can take a hit. At one point being able to endure it was his only recourse. In a match it’s something he’s used to his advantage, he does it now.

Eames jabs at him, and instead of dancing back Arthur lets it connect. Hard — Eames is seriously fucking strong — and powerful against his cheek bone. Eames winces, hesitates for a second, and that’s Arthur’s advantage, he darts forward and gives Eames’ an answering upper cut.

Before flitting back again.

“Shit —  _ fuck  _ — Arthur. You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Arthur snaps back, back on the balls of his feet and ready to dart in again. 

Eames brings his arms up, blocks Arthur’s jabs effortlessly again, makes a throw — Arthur moves into it again, instead of away — and the fist collides. He uses the closeness, Eames unguarded on his right side, as a chance to punch back again. If Eames was a lighter opponent they’d be very effective blows, but instead they just knocked him off his game slightly.

Arthur bounces back again, his lip smarting. 

“Fucking hell Arthur.” Eames looks concerned, he doesn’t stop however. His next few punches are sloppy though, he’s pulling them too much, worried they’re going to collide. “Is this how you always fight? It’s dirty man, but you’re not always going to be facing someone who holds back.”

Arthur scowls at him, weaving out and in. “You’re not supposed to hold back. The point is that I can catch you anyway.” 

He goes to throw a punch again, letting himself get into the line of fire and open to being hit. Eames catches his arm instead, forcing him to stop.

It makes something in Arthur snap. Eames’ move isn’t a boxing one, he’s trying to shut him down. Arthur instinctively goes for his legs, more of a wrestling move ( _ sometimes on Wednesdays he joins the wrestling class _ ) that should be effective in forcing Eames to let go to retain his balance.

Eames doesn’t, instead he brings his knee up to block Arthur’s thigh, it makes Arthur lose balance instead. He lashes out to punch Eames as he goes down and Eames grabs that arm too. 

They fall to the mat. Eames is pinning him and it makes Arthur feel hot, and nervous, and  _ out of control.  _ He’s hard, Eames is going to beat the shit out of him when he notices. Arthur needs to get up, get out of there before this goes utterly pear shaped. He only needs to keep it together for a few more weeks. Getting the shit beaten out of him now will be tragic since he’s so close to getting out.

“Fuck off,” Arthur snaps, trying to wriggle out of the hold. Eames sits on his thighs, stops them from trying to throw him off.

“Hey, come on. Fuck mate, look. Calm down.” 

Eames’ words just make him angrier, and the weight just makes him  _ hotter _ . He feels like he’s spinning out of control. 

Eames leans forward so they’re sharing breaths, giving him direct eye contact. “Look, Arthur,  _ Arthur.  _ Stop. You stop and I’ll let go. Alright? Just breathe for me.” Arthur stops struggling, he doesn’t want to, but he can see it’s the only way out. He pants a few times from the effort of the fight. “See? It’s fine, I’m gonna’ let go now. Try not to bash me’ head in yeah? No one needs a black eye on their bleedin’ birthday remember?”

Delicately Eames lets go of one arm, testing to see if Arthur is going to lash out at him. The movement brings their groins together and Arthur can’t help it, it makes him whine. Eames pauses for a second, looking a little shocked. 

And then Arthur does something really fucking stupid.

He brings his free arm around Eames’ neck and pulls him down, bringing their mouths flush together and Arthur  _ kisses.  _ He’s kissed what feels like hundreds of girls. He’s pretty good at it now — giving them what they want, never too much, more than what he wants. All of his practice just flies out the window though, he just sucks Eames’ lower lip into his mouth and whines, taking the moment, finally having something that he wants. Even if in a second he’s about to be fucking murdered by some brute in a barely legal gym in Bridgeport. 

Eames doesn’t kill him however. He stays frozen for a second before kissing Arthur back. And that’s just  _ glorious _ . The hand that was once pinning him comes to his hair and  _ pulls  _ until Eames can slot their mouths together more fully. A thick tongue plundering his mouth. It’s soft and wet. With Eames leaning over him he feels like the man is  _ everywhere.  _ And that’s good, it’s what he wants. Arthur sucks on the tongue in his mouth and bucks his hips against the heavy body against him. It makes Eames groan in response, and Arthur thinks he can feel the man’s heavy cock against his upper thigh. He wants to see it, touch it. He’d beg to have the chance to put it in his mouth, just once. Just to know. Just for the memory so he can play it back in the future when he’s with some girl and trying to pretend he’s straight. 

Eames lets go of the other arm that was pinned. Arthur brings that hand up into Eames’ hair as well and tries to pull him closer. Tries to  _ eat  _ him. He bites on Eames’ fleshy lip, soothing it with a lick, before accepting the tongue back into his mouth. 

Eames sinuates a hand between them. He squeezes the line of Arthur’s hard cock and it feels so good Arthur thinks he’s going to cum right then. He bucks up into it, voicing his content in Eames’ mouth. Eames moves his hand to get his own dick out, and Arthur can definitely feel it. Arthur’s shirt has rolled up slightly and the sticky tip slides over his defined stomach. He wants to see it, touch it, but he doesn’t want to stop kissing. 

Eames is back to squeezing his cock now, through the fabric rubbing his thumb over the tip, encouraging it to leak. Arthur bucks into the pleasure, whining into Eames’ mouth, pulling at his hair to express how good it feels, how much more he wants. 

“Please!” he gasps out as it starts to be too much. He’s so close, he wants to feel Eames’ large hand on him. 

Eames doesn’t withhold, he dives into the stretchy top of Arthur’s pants, cupping the tip and jacking it quickly. It’s enough. All of it is too much, too brilliant, too much like what he’s thought about and day dreamed about what feels like his entire life. He falls over the edge, waves of pleasure hitting him. 

Probably because of the fighting earlier but his body feels completely shattered, heavy and wrung out. Eames hissed when Arthur accidentally pulled too hard on his hair while climaxing but he doesn’t really seem to mind, keeping them close and kissing. Eames does take Arthur’s hand from his head and bring it down between them. Eames’ grip is sticky and damp from Arthur’s release, and he holds Arthur’s hand to his erection and uses it to jack off. It’s bewildering, so different from Predan. More present. Arthur feels like they’re doing it together, and of course, Arthur is stone cold sober. 

Eames puts his forehead on Arthur’s chest for the final moments, breaking their kissing, and Arthur glances down and watches as Eames finishes all over Arthur’s quivering stomach. A litany of “ _ fuck, yes, fuck _ ” from the twisted English mouth. Even if he’s going to get punished for this, even if he never gets to experience it ever again, Arthur promises himself it was worth it. He feels more complete all of a sudden, like he knows himself better than ever before. It’s an awful kind of knowledge, a truth that means the rest of his life is going to be harder and never simple, but at least he  _ knows  _ it.

Eames rolls off him, slumping onto his back and panting through his own pleasure. Arthur’s body feels hot, but suddenly the weight of what they’ve done makes the room feel cold. He glances at the door, suddenly paranoid that someone saw.  _ There’s probably about twenty people in this building who would straight up kill someone for being gay.  _

Arthur pulls his trousers back over his dick and inches away from Eames slightly. The man isn’t looking at him, he does have a slight smile on his face though. 

“Are you going to beat me up now?” It’s happened a few times. Guys that Arthur got too close to in a bar he snuck into. Who one second appeared to like the idea of touching someone, and then realised what that meant. It was a quick and brutal lesson to keep his attractive underwraps. 

Eames shoots him a shocked look, “What? Fucking hell, no!” He tucks himself into his pants and sits up.

Arthur gets up and skitters away, as if they’re still boxing. Not wanting to be within Eames’ grasp.

“Right, okay. And you won’t tell anyone?” He’s hoping that Eames’ active involvement in what happened will give the man a reason not to go around telling people.

Eames looks at him with a frown. “Sure. ‘Course not. Not even Katy if you want.”

Arthur suddenly feels ashamed. He doesn’t really know what Eames and Katya’s relationship was. They weren’t ever serious, but Eames definitely slept over that first night and they clearly kept in contact. Katya never really spoke about him. Arthur had assumed he was just her local weed dealer — friendlier and less likely to try and steal your stuff than other people in Bridgeport. But maybe she had really liked him. Maybe this word hurt her.

He takes another few steps backwards, like physically putting space between them might make it better.

“Right. Don’t tell Katya.”

“Are you alright?”

It felt like Eames was always asking that, always invading his personal space, trying to work out what was going on with him.  _ You’re the one who kissed him though. _

“I should go, um.. That was—” amazing? Breathtaking? Terrifying? “No one should know.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Eames says again serious. He hasn’t gotten up from the mat yet and Arthur has the awful feeling he is doing it for Arthur’s benefit, so not to spook him. 

“Right, okay.” Arthur flees.

  
  


###  Arthur 22 - Eames 27. First Time Arthur Sees Eames In Dreamshare.

 

Arthur has been working with Dominic Cobb for almost two years now. He was running slightly late for his meeting, but they didn’t have the strictest schedule anyway. He met the professor back during his bachelors, majoring in engineering at MIT but minoring in architecture. Somewhere along the line he took a course in neuroscience, social spaces, and tech, that brought him in front of Professor Cobb who seemed to waste most of his lectures rambling off topic, but if you could get a minute of his office time would blow your papers out the water. 

Four years later — two of them finishing his undergraduate degree and the second two as a grad student — and they were working together on military projects, speaking at conferences about psychosis and dream experiences, and testing hallucinogenic drugs on poor grad students (including Arthur) to see if they could get the tech to work. 

Arthur wasn’t the mastermind behind the system, but he’d made it better. Machines with his release mechanism and dilation method always gave more stable dreams. It was exciting, being at the forefront of cutting edge technology that came with hefty non disclosure agreements and compensatory pay offs to make up for his work not being published. 

When the American military bought his design for the release mechanism Arthur was suddenly rich. Disgustingly rich. It was mainly due to Cobb who wouldn’t let him sell it for the first price offered (“ _But Dom, $200,000! I don’t care if it isn’t mine anymore for that much money!_ ”) and instead brokered a deal so that Arthur’s design would still belong to him and was technically leased to the government. They didn’t mind, it meant that if Arthur made a better one they got that too and first, pus Arthur seemed to have a constant stream of money in his bank account.

He didn’t know what to do with it. The first thing he did was buy Katya a house in Massachusetts. She’d resisted but inevitably gave in. He had a room there and he stored all his stuff in it, which always made him laugh when he went home every break. “See Katya, my bedroom will always be a storage closet.” She was taking classes in social work. Arthur knew really that originally she’d only taken on a foster kid for the checks, but she was brilliant and better than anyone he’d ever met in the system. He paid for everything upfront, telling her that all of his successes were really hers.

“You took me in.” He had  told her while they were sitting on the livingroom floor, drinking red wine from a deep glass.

“Yes, but I got given money for that. This is too much Arthur, you’ve already bought me this house, in my name!”

“I know. But… You took me in, and then you took me out of Bridgeport. And you’re… You’re the only family I’ve got, the only person who has even given a shit about me, and now the only person I have to provide for. Let me do this. Let me have the chance to have someone to do things for.” 

She’d accepted in the end. He’d also sent Paula money, she was married now — to the American boy — with two kids. They looked beautiful. He wasn’t that bad afterall, finished high school and got a job in the police department. Arthur had always thought that men who went into the police force were bullies, but he thought that about most men anyway. At least the guy wasn’t too arrogant to accept the money. 

Arthur still felt like he looked poor. He’d been trying to update his wardrobe. He loved the look of suits, layers of gorgeous fabric wrapped tight around your body like armor. Put on the right material and you could double your age. But he was always worried that his fascination with it made him look like a gay cliché.

He thought about it a lot, standing in the busy tram from his apartment to the College. His eyes flick over the other occupants, wondering if they could tell. If he looked like a girl to them, like so many people had said back in Bridgeport.

Arthur wasn’t a self hating gay. Leaving Bridgeport and finding out that there were actually groups of people who were open — and even  _ happy  _ — about their sexuality was a revelation. There was a Gay-Straight Alliance at his nice new school in uptown Chicago. He’d gone a few times, skulked around the edges. Everyone had just felt so… Unburdened. He was still the weird Polish kid, the strange foster kid, the poor kid. It was like all the things that made him normal in Bridgeport made him stranger uptown. There were no hoards of foster kids being palmed off on already stressed out foster parents. Everyone seemed to have money, or even if they didn’t, they had assets. The idea that Arthur and Katya worked full time to afford their little apartment wasn’t fathomable to these people. So sure he finally dated some guys and hooked up with people he wasn’t scared were going to beat him up for looking at them the wrong way, but he didn’t really fit in any more than he did before.

He walks down the halls towards Cobb’s office. Arthur has done this walk literally hundreds of times now. He’s slept in that office — for research and simply exhaustion — enough times that the nighttime janitorial staff know him by name. He keeps a toothbrush and a spare change of clothes in his bottom desk draw. The other grad students that work with Cobb are one part jealous of him, and three parts clearly terrified. It’d be amusing if half of them weren’t actually older than him, but then again exacting efficiency is just mind blowing for some. (The fear might also come from the fact that Cobb hires and fires grad students based on whether they get on with Arthur or not. Arthur was never there to make friends, so he doesn’t really care.) 

The suits that he’s been tentatively trying are helping, making him look more put together. Two nights ago he went out in a grey suit with a bespoke burnt orange tie. The tie actually cost more than the rest of the suit put together, but Arthur had kept up his fitness habit since working in a gym, so luckily he could make even cheaper suits look good. The guy he had picked up had thought so, mentioning that he’d really rather Arthur kept the suit  _ on  _ while the man knelt in front of him and sucked him off.

Arthur wasn’t wearing such an expensive tie today, although his slacks were vintage and had been tailored to him at the local seamstress. Deep dark blue that made the white of his shirt pop. No tie ( _ because Arthur wasn’t sure how to match colors perfectly ye _ t) but some silver cufflinks with the foundational maths to his release mechanism etched into them. (A gift from Mal, Cobb’s wife, last Christmas). Arthur felt good, he felt in control. He felt like this was the beginning of who he was now. 

Arthur enters Cobb’s office and freezes, the air rushing out of him like he’d been punched in the gut: why the fuck was Eames _ — Bridgeport, weed dealing, last time I saw you, you’d just jerked me off and I had run away in case you beat me up — Eames  _ sitting in the middle of Cobb’s office?

“What is this?” Is the first thing that falls out of Arthur’s mouth.

Eames who had been sitting on Cobb’s desk talking to the man looks around and takes him in. “Darling! Fuck me love, you look grown up.” His accent has mellowed into something more reasonably British, although still twangs offensively when he throws out slang. 

“Oh, you’ve met?” Cobb says from behind his seat. He knows Arthur is gay — unfortunately, although like Arthur said, he’s  _ not  _ in the closet or a self hating gay — all the same Arthur feels a low level blush coming on. Mainly because what Cobb might be thinking is true in some ways.

“Yes,” Arthur says, unkeen to give away more details.

“How’s Katy?” Is of course what Eames chooses to say, and Arthur watches Cobb’s face light up in surprise. It had taken a long time for Cobb and Mal to even meet Katya. Mainly because Katya had told him that meeting all his academic friends and colleagues always made her feel stupid:

_ “You’re not stupid. You’re smarter than most of them. Take away their parent’s credit cards and they probably would die in a ditch.” _

_ “I know Arthur, but you know, I didn’t even finish high school and these people have all these letters at the end of their name.” _

_ “I have letters at the end of my name.” _

_ “Yes, but I also had to give you a bath once because you fell in a pond and started crying because there were leeches on you.” _

_ “Why am I nice to you? I take it all back, I hate you and you have no idea what you’re talking about.”  _

So in all the idea that someone in Arthur’s life might know Katya well enough to ask after her suggests at least some level of intimacy to Cobb. 

“She’s good. In Boston, she’s studying.” Arthur doesn’t really know what he’s doing right now.

“So you two know each other from… Before? ” Cobb asks, openly curious but not enough to push Arthur.

Arthur nods. Eames face lights up like this is his favorite topic. “Oh yeah, me, Arthur n’Katy go way back.” It’s such a strange accent. Not that it was normal before, but at least it was consistent then. Now Eames spends one part of the time sounding like an English gentleman, the next sounding like a thug. “I met Arthur when he was eleven.”

“Twelve.” It’s the least useful addition to the conversation Arthur could make. 

“Right,” says Cobb, “And you’re also Polish?” he asks Eames.

“Unfortunately not, you met Katy then? Did they chat Polish over your head to keep you out the conversation too?” He winks at Arthur like this is an in joke. Arthur still hates that about him, but mostly because he’s panicking. Two very different parts of his life feel like they’re colliding. The person who he was, who he’s tried to get away from, and everything he has now. 

Eames looks nice, more rugged when before he looked brutish. He’s aged well, and although isn’t the smartest dresser ( _ is he wearing orange socks with gray pant trousers? _ ) he doesn’t clothe himself to show off his muscle any longer. Less eager to remind people that he could fuck them up if they look at him the wrong way. 

Arthur wants him to disappear. He doesn’t want to have to deal with this. 

“I’m going to go.” Both Eames and Cobb stop what they were just saying and turn to him.

“Now?” Cobb says, a little alarmed. 

Arthur chances a look at Eames face, and it’s… He’s not frowning, as much as he’s trying to sus Arthur out. Arthur really does not want to be sussed out right now however so looks back to Cobb.

“Yeah. Back to my apartment. I’ll… Give you a call soon.”

He turns and goes to leave the room, Eames’ words hit him from behind however. “It was good to see you again, darling.” He freezes for a second, turns halfway back to nod, and then flees.

 

* * *

 

Arthur had stopped by a grocery store on the way home and stress bought a lot of ingredients. He didn’t normally cook for himself like this, even now he had money to buy actual quality meat and vegetables, he just didn’t have anyone to cook for when in Cambridge. He also bought a bottle of expensive red wine. He liked wine more than beer or spirits. He couldn’t look at vodka without thinking of Predan and he couldn’t look at whisky without thinking of Eames, and he really didn’t want to be thinking of Eames right now.

He’s in his little apartment now. He rents a place near the College since commuting from his house in Boston would have been a nightmare. He’s flouring the cuts of beef as he calls Katya and by the time she’s answered he’s browning them in a pan.

“ _ Czesc mój drogi _ .” She answers in Polish.

It already makes him feel more comfortable, he answers her back in the language in kind.

“ _ Hi. _ ”

“ _ You sound strange, and are you cooking?”  _

The meat has browned and he’s scooping it out the skillet to add the onions and red peppers. “ _ Yes. Goulasch. The proper way. _ ”

“ _ Why? You never cook for yourself." _

“ _ They had goulasch at the cafeteria yesterday — they put macaroni and ground beef in it. I was offended, I wanted the real thing. _ ”

Katya laughs down the phone to him,  _ “When you choose to be patriotic is always funny to me. I wish I was there to have some. _ ”

“ _ Have you eaten?” _

_ “Yes, some sad sandwich from the corner shop. Nothing good. _ ”

_ “I’ll make us goulasch and potato pancakes when I’m next home. With proper paprika.” _

_ “Good, and we’ll drink vodka for once. None of your fancy wine gowno.” _

_ “If that’s what you want.”  _ He’d do more than think of Predan for an evening for Katya.

“ _ Good. Okay, so what is the problem? You’re not talking my ear off about whatever interesting experiment you’re doing, so something must be wrong.” _

Arthur doesn’t say anything straight away, instead pouring the mushrooms into the mixture, mixing it around so everything sweats and goes soft. Katya doesn’t mind, she’s known him for a long time now. He adds the meat back in, seasons all the food with paprika and pepper, before pouring in a jug of chicken stock. The meal will take at least an hour to cook, so he pops the lid on and grabs his wine glass, relocating to the couch.

“ _ I saw Eames today.” _

_ “Eames. As in Bridgeport Eames?” _

_ “Yaah, he was in Cobb’s office.” _

_ “Cobb. Your boss Cobb who works at a fancy College?” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “What the fuck was he doing there?”  _ In some ways Arthur feels utterly validated by Katya’s response. Because that was literally how he felt, what the fuck  _ was  _ Eames doing there. The whole concept was bewildering and he had to just stand there like what was normal.

_ “I don’t really know. We work with a lot of people for the projects. There’s a lot of blackmarket dreamshare stuff out there, and people are making innovations and we want to see them.” _

_ “You think Eames is doing your dream stuff? On the streets?” _

_ “Yeah maybe, we had this fifty year old crack addict say he tried a dream within a dream a month ago. If he can get his hands on the stuff, I’m sure someone like Eames could.” _

_ “This is so fucking weird.” _

_ “Tell me about it.” _

_ “So this is what is wrong? You’re feeling spooked because Cobb got to see a slice of Bridgeport?”  _ There was some truth to it. To be honest, Arthur  _ was  _ a bit defensive about his past when it came to people these days. But for the most part he was over that with Cobb. There’s only so many nights where you fall asleep at your desk and someone comes over and puts you to bed on the couch with a coat over you before things like formality start to fall away. Dom Cobb, although a bit blinkered sometimes, is the first man Arthur has ever trusted. Although he’s spent more time speaking to Mal about his  _ “simply tragic, mon cherie”  _ past, he knows that Cobb is on the same page.

_ “I hooked up with Eames.” _

_ “Today?” _

_ “No, back in Bridgeport. When I was sixteen.” _

_ “Well… You kept that quiet.” _ It had taken years for Arthur to even tell Katya he was gay, and that was without mentioning he hooked up with some thug. 

_ “Yeah, I thought it might be awkward.” _

_ “That we’ve slept with the same person? Yeah a little.” _

_ “Are you angry?” _

_ “About Eames? Fuck no. Arthur we slept together twice. And to be pretty honest I think he was seventeen the first time.” _

_ “And you were twenty-five.” _

_ “Yeah, talk about awkward when he invited me to his eighteenth birthday party.” _

Arthur laughs, imagining it.  _ “Didn’t he tell you before?” _

_ “He said it slipped his mind.” _

_ “He’s such a dick.” _

_ “Sixteen though.” _

_ “Yeah, I thought he was going to beat me up.” _

_ “Did he threaten you?” _

_ “No. He was cool about it, I practically ran away.” _

_ “I’m not surprised. Wow, okay. So no wonder today was weird.”  _ Arthur’s goulasch was almost done and he had finished his wine.

_ “Yeah, I didn’t really know what to say.” _

_ “I’m thinking of visiting Poland.” _

_ “Really?” _

_ “Yeah, you should come with me. Let Cobb deal with Eames.” _

Arthur thinks about it.  _ “Don’t you think that comes across as a bit.. Childish.” _

_ “No. You were sixteen. He should have known better. You’re only twenty-two now. You’re allowed to be young for once. Come away with me, pretend you never saw him. It’s your right. You’re a success Arthur, you shouldn’t have to deal with shit like that.” _

Arthur nods, even though Katya can’t see it.  _ “And I’ll just, put it behind me. Not engage.” _

_ “Yeah. It’s your life now, you don’t have to be any of the things you used to be.” _

It sounds good, it sounds like Katya has given him the chance to let himself off the hook. 

_ “Okay. Let’s go. I’ll call Cobb and look up tickets.” _

_ “Yes moji drogi! You can be whomever you want to be. He doesn’t have a right to know you just because he stuck his dick in you one time.” _

Arthur lets out a trill of laughter,  _ “He didn’t ‘stick his dick in me’.” _

_ “Okay, okay, what  _ did  _ he do then?” _

Arthur tells her, getting up to pour another glass of wine and add some corn flour to his food. It feels like a release. He’s here now. He’s free of Bridgeport and everything that used to keep him tied down and constantly second guessing himself. Katya herself said so, it’s his life.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Warnings:  
>  _Eames gives Arthur some weed when he's only twelve. At thirteen it is referenced that Arthur with an equally young girl loses his virginity (off screen/100% nongraphic). At fourteen Eames gives Arthur alcohol. At fifteen Arthur gives a fellow teenager a handjob. (Nongraphic). At sixteen Arthur carries out mutual masturbation with Eames (somewhat graphic, not presented as porn, I hope). There is reference to Arthur being beaten up quite a few times. Reference to xenophobia. Homophobia, and internalised homophobia._
> 
> \------
> 
> I kinda' fell in love a little bit with Polish Arthur & his network of Eastern European kids. Even if this fic isn't wildly successful, I'm really happy I wrote it.  
> (Please do kudos & comment if you read/liked it).


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